I do think disco is mostly good, but it’s also about 5-10% catastrophically bad/nonsensical/poorly written, which can really take the wind out of your sails when watching parts of it.
I like Disco, although I do think it has writing problems. But 5-10% would be a high mark for a Star Trek series.
Think of all the utterly shit episodes there were of TNG despite TNG generally being considered the show the other shows want to emulate in one way or another.
There’s bad episodes, and then there’s “this character was exposed to a spicy rock while in vitro and throughout childhood and then got upset one time and made all the spicy rocks explode and killed all the federation people”.
Trek’s variable episode quality is a well-established trope at this point, but disco has absolutely pushed the handwavey bullshit ceiling to new heights. Disco absolutely has some really good high points, but I wish the low points weren’t quite so low.
This is compounded by the fact that Disco’s format is much more of an “epic season-long tale” (compared to SNW’s much more episodic format), and the fact that the writers basically bunted on the singular climactic moment of the 3rd series when it should have been a grand slam is just embarrassing and disappointing.
I don’t see that as any more ridiculous than ‘if you go faster than infinite speed, which is somehow possible, you turn into a salamander’ or ‘Deanna gets energy-raped, gets pregnant, has a baby, it grows up in about 3 days into a kindergartener, then dies in her arms, but that’s all okay because an alien wanted to know what being human was like’ or ‘this is a planet that is exactly like Earth in every way except the Roman Empire exists with 20th century technology and that makes sense because we have a theory about it.’
Oh, don’t get me wrong - all of the instances you cited (as well as a few others) were… not good at all, and completely asinine.
The primary contrast I’m drawing here is that those were bad episodes… whereas the Burn was a season-long mystery that was tied up in a neat little bow with absolute nonsensical bullshit, which frankly cheapened the impact of the season overall, and makes me roll my eyes whenever they do a callback to something Burn-related in S4. If it was confined to a single episode (like the barzan seed ship stuff I mentioned earlier), it’d be far more excusable, but in my eyes, they kinda soured the entire season by just phoning it in for what should have been one of the most important segments of the season to really nail the writing on.
All that said: it’s overall still fun; I am rewatching it right now, in preparation for S5 starting to roll in April.
True, but Star Trek was mostly episodic, even when there were story arcs, before Discovery too. I think the problem is more about TV shows, especially sci-fi shows, leaning very hard on the season-long mystery plot arc. Because then you’re putting all your money down on a single story and if that story isn’t one of the more popular ones, you take a much bigger risk.
Yeah, I agree with that. Making your series into some sort of make-or-break mega-movie-ish thing can work sometimes… but it’s not the appropriate way to tell every single story, and producers seem to finally be starting to realize that. Personally, I blame the MCU and the related series for that being a screenplay writing fad for so long.
Fwiw, I do think SNW has largely nailed the format for the modern era - mostly episodic, but there’s a higher-level background plot that gets touched on every once in a while, and here and there you’ll find an episode purely focused on that overarching plot. And I also think my enjoyment of DS9 and Voyager back in the day stems from that broadly-comparable series presentation.
I like Disco, although I do think it has writing problems. But 5-10% would be a high mark for a Star Trek series.
Think of all the utterly shit episodes there were of TNG despite TNG generally being considered the show the other shows want to emulate in one way or another.
There’s bad episodes, and then there’s “this character was exposed to a spicy rock while in vitro and throughout childhood and then got upset one time and made all the spicy rocks explode and killed all the federation people”.
Trek’s variable episode quality is a well-established trope at this point, but disco has absolutely pushed the handwavey bullshit ceiling to new heights. Disco absolutely has some really good high points, but I wish the low points weren’t quite so low.
This is compounded by the fact that Disco’s format is much more of an “epic season-long tale” (compared to SNW’s much more episodic format), and the fact that the writers basically bunted on the singular climactic moment of the 3rd series when it should have been a grand slam is just embarrassing and disappointing.
I don’t see that as any more ridiculous than ‘if you go faster than infinite speed, which is somehow possible, you turn into a salamander’ or ‘Deanna gets energy-raped, gets pregnant, has a baby, it grows up in about 3 days into a kindergartener, then dies in her arms, but that’s all okay because an alien wanted to know what being human was like’ or ‘this is a planet that is exactly like Earth in every way except the Roman Empire exists with 20th century technology and that makes sense because we have a theory about it.’
I can keep going…
Oh, don’t get me wrong - all of the instances you cited (as well as a few others) were… not good at all, and completely asinine.
The primary contrast I’m drawing here is that those were bad episodes… whereas the Burn was a season-long mystery that was tied up in a neat little bow with absolute nonsensical bullshit, which frankly cheapened the impact of the season overall, and makes me roll my eyes whenever they do a callback to something Burn-related in S4. If it was confined to a single episode (like the barzan seed ship stuff I mentioned earlier), it’d be far more excusable, but in my eyes, they kinda soured the entire season by just phoning it in for what should have been one of the most important segments of the season to really nail the writing on.
All that said: it’s overall still fun; I am rewatching it right now, in preparation for S5 starting to roll in April.
True, but Star Trek was mostly episodic, even when there were story arcs, before Discovery too. I think the problem is more about TV shows, especially sci-fi shows, leaning very hard on the season-long mystery plot arc. Because then you’re putting all your money down on a single story and if that story isn’t one of the more popular ones, you take a much bigger risk.
Yeah, I agree with that. Making your series into some sort of make-or-break mega-movie-ish thing can work sometimes… but it’s not the appropriate way to tell every single story, and producers seem to finally be starting to realize that. Personally, I blame the MCU and the related series for that being a screenplay writing fad for so long.
Fwiw, I do think SNW has largely nailed the format for the modern era - mostly episodic, but there’s a higher-level background plot that gets touched on every once in a while, and here and there you’ll find an episode purely focused on that overarching plot. And I also think my enjoyment of DS9 and Voyager back in the day stems from that broadly-comparable series presentation.
Edit: and LD, of course. LD is great!
I agree. I think SNW figured out the right formula for a modern Star Trek show. LD too really. It also has that combination and it works.
I think the issue is extent. Crusher fucked a ghost in one ep. DISC storylines drag a full season.